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Gradually as the distance increased between them, the memory of old Alec began to smell as sweet as the sandal-wood chest in Skag's nostrils the chest and the rose-jar that never could die and the old friend became one identity. . . . India didn't excite Skag, who was twenty-five by this time. In fact, some aspects of India were more natural to him than his own country.
About this slender figure there hung a wan sweetness like a fine mist, almost an ethereality in that light; yet in the pale face lurked something reckless, something of the actor, too; and though his smile was gentle and wistful, there was a twinkle behind it, not seen at first, something amused and impish; a small surprise underneath, like a flea in a rose-jar.
Around her the garden was fragrant as a rose-jar with the lid left off, and the very paths beneath were red and white with fallen petals.
In the morning Betty and I are going to pick all the faded roses to pieces and save the petals. Eugenia wants to fill a rose-jar with part of them. Betty knows how to make that potpourri that Lloyd's Grandmother Amanthis always kept in the rose-jars in the drawing-room. She's copied the receipt for me. "I'm not a bit sleepy," she continued.
She lifted the little rose-jar for one more whiff of its faint, sweet fragrance, and said, slowly, as she closed it again, "And as long as I live the thought of her will help to take the sting out of all my thorns." With a sigh of relief Alida Gooding saw the dentist put away his instruments.
She had been wandering around the drawing-room, glancing into a book here, rearranging a vase of flowers there, turning over the pile of music on the piano, striking aimless chords on the harp-strings. Presently she paused in front of the mantel to lift the lid from the rose-jar and let its prisoned sweetness escape into the room.
"Some brand of calisthenics that. And he was the old one with the rose-jar?" Skag's hand lifted toward the other and Cadman's met his. There was a wet, meaty growl, indescribably low-pitched but no chance even to shout only to huddle back together to the farthest corner. The beast had stalked faultlessly and pounced, landing upon the thin cross pieces of bamboo, but short of the bait.
"I'll put it away in an envelope when I get back to the house," thought Mary. "When they all fade I'll save the leaves and make a potpourri of them like we made of Eugenia's wedding roses, and put them away in my little Japanese rose-jar, to keep always." Then the music began, and she entered heartily into the beautiful Christmas service.
A sound of sleigh-bells jingling rapidly toward the house made her clap the lid on the box and drop it hastily back into the rose-jar. "There they come!" she cried, "and the candles haven't been lighted. Hurry, grandfathah! We can't wait to call Walkah! Throw open the front doah!"
All this was unreservedly good to Skag thrilling as certain few books and the top drawer that had been his mother's. . . . But something way back of that, utterly his own deep heart-business, was connected with the rose-jar. It was breathless like opening a telegram its first scent after days or weeks.
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